The news of winter and snow drama abounds.  So imagine my surprise when I hear “huoh-huoh-huoh” coming from the lake as I walk the dog, bundled in my coat, gloves and scarf-not another soul in sight.  The familiar high pitch call coming from seagulls gliding over a coveted post instantly makes me feel warm and smell salty air.  The sun feels decadent, I long to let my feet sink into sand. 

 

We are two hours away from the coast, so their presence is unexpected.  A funny memory of a seagull tearing apart a neighboring beach bum’s potato chip bag makes me smile.  These birds seem to get more brazen each time I venture to the shore.

 

It won’t be long now.  Six months until summer.  Unless, of course, I plan an escape!

Flip through the channels on your television and you will find a plethora of reality shows each trying to find the best in creative talent: Shark Tank, America’s Got Talent, The Voice, The X Factor, Cake Boss, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, need I go on?  So where’s the reality show for books?

It’s called Book It!  Maybe you could come up with a cleverer name, but here is the vision.  Book industry leaders-traditional publishers, Amazon, literary agents, maybe even someone like Hugh Howey, who advocates for independent publishing, battle it out in front of an audience for the best reads. Authors pitch their book in front of the panel.  The panel can ask the author questions.  The viewing audience can tweet if they would read the said book.  The tweets would be tabulated live so the panel can gauge the reading publics interest.  Then the panel tries to woo the author they are interested in to sign a contract.

Finally, readers get a chance to see what actually goes on behind the closed doors of publication and have a voice in what is published.  Authors get a chance to query all the publishing options at once.  Publishers and agents get an opportunity to sign best-sellers.  And best of all?  The art and joy of reading, as well as literacy, is promoted.  More stories are told.  How about it, Mark Burnett?


#RealityTV #AmReading #BookWorm #BookClub

It’s every mother’s worst nightmare.  Enjoying an average day in the outdoors, four- year-old Lolita was brutally torn away from her mother by a gang right in front of her entire family.  There was no amber alert forty-four years ago-but that wouldn’t matter, because we know and have always known where Lolita is.

Today Lolita and her mother are still alive, but separated by miles.  Moms and Dads take their children to see Lolita perform.  Lolita lives alone, cramped in a tiny tank.  See for yourself in this video:
Lolita Today

If Lolita were in her natural home, this is what her life would look like.  She most likely would have stayed connected with her family for her whole life.  She most likely would have mated and increased her population.
Lolita's Natural Home

On Saturday, January 17, a #MarchForLolita will occur.  Most of us who would like to see her released to a sea pen in her ocean home, where her mother still resides, won’t be able to get to the march in Miami, Florida.  We can, however, show our support in a number of ways:

1.     Sign this petition: Link 

2.     Do not buy a ticket to a whale/dolphin show for entertainment.

3.     Watch the movies Blackfish and The Cove if you have not already.  Encourage schools and PTA’s to show the movies to students and parents.

Imagine the hope freeing Lolita would bring.  Hope for the girls kidnapped in Africa and forced into marriage by Boko Haram.  Hope for a world filled with respect and compassion for others.  Hope that future generations will have magnificent wildlife, like killer whales, on the planet earth.

Help Spread The Word: Share this message with your friends via the Facebook and Twitter Links below.

Susan Allison-Dean includes her passion for whales and dolphins in her novels.  She joins the millions of others who speak for cetaceans(Dolphins & Whales).

Snow is slathered on the rooftops like icing on a Cinnabon-thick and creamy in some areas, sparse or non-existent in others.  A lone bird, its feathers puffed, pecks at the ground, at what I wonder?  The worms are surely hibernating.  A sign of life comes from the stream of smoke wafting from a neighbor’s chimney. 

The sun shines as bright as always but is now stingy with its heat.  Deciduous trees once lush green and fanning us with a soothing breeze, now skeletons of bark.   Evergreens stand staunch, clenched as I do when I first hit the below freezing air outdoors-clenching every muscle hoping to preserve precious body heat.  White clouds wander in the soft blue sky as they always do. 

Welcomed silence surrounds me accept for the hum of the refrigerator and the intermittent crackling in the baseboard heat.  No school buses screaming by, no dog walkers chatting, not even the thud of the Sunday morning paper hitting the driveway-that replaced long ago with a thin box plugged in to the wall. 

And so it is in the suburbs of New York City.  Mother Nature’s moment to meditate it seems.